About EDJBA grading process and feedback

For the past few seasons the Eastern Districts Junior Basketball Association (EDJBA) have run 6 grading rounds before the start of the regular season on round 7. To ensure integrity in teams’ performances during grading, premiership points for grading games do count towards calculating ladders. However points accrued are adjusted for one-sided matches. Ladders are calculated and published from after round 8, which is the second round of the regular season.

Coaches and team managers can email the appropriate Ivanhoe Knights registrar; girls (Karen) or boys (Ian) who are authorised to pass on feedback and requests to the association’s grading committee. The grading committee can see from the results teams that are losing or winning by big margins, they are more interested in feedback about close scores where one team is missing their best player and other cases where the result doesn't reflect a teams ability. This includes cases where the winning team eases off during the second half, or otherwise "throws" the match. In such cases the committee can examine the score sheet to compare first half and second half scores.

The committee meet twice a season; once after round 2, to decide teams’ grades for rounds 4-6 and once after round 5, to decide teams’ grades for the rest of the season. Consequently any requests or comments should be emailed on or before the Sunday immediately after round 2, or the Sunday immediately after round 5. As fixtures day is on the Sunday immediately following round 6, the final grading round can only ever be for fine tuning. If a parent has a concern about their team’s grading, they should speak with their coach and/or team manager about sending feedback to the club registrar to forward.

Unless your team is in the lowest or highest grade, it is typically premature to give any feedback after the first round. It’s hard to tell in a one-sided match if Team A should go down a grade or if Team B should go up a grade and by how much. The committee need at least two rounds of results to start to compare teams within different grades to each other.

When looking at grading changes, it is not just a matter of which grade you are in, but with which teams you are placed with for that grade. The teams that make up a grade define that grade more so than the name of the grade. For instance if you are routinely getting thrashed, but you remain in the same grade, it’s more than likely that it's your opponents that have moved up a grade or two.

To have a look at the results and notional grades that those games were played in, either click through from the left hand menu or visit the EDJBA website directly.